When it comes to CrossFit, there are many questions that come up when toying with the idea of joining a CrossFit gym. “Am I in shape enough to do CrossFit?” “What if I can’t do a pull up?” “What if I have never lifted weights before?”

With the popularity of CrossFit continuously growing, we are flooded with images on ESPN, YouTube, and social media of rippling abs, athletes flailing around on rings and pull up bars, putting heavy weights over head, and laying on the floor in exhaustion. Although these things are not rare, they don’t represent the entire community of CrossFit either. 97.5% of the CrossFit world is your average Joe trying to get in better shape and live a healthy lifestyle. (Don’t Google that stat)

I truly believe that anyone can do CrossFit, but I also know that CrossFit is not for everybody. CrossFit is an infinitely scalable strength and conditioning program. That means that anyone from kids, to athletes, to senior citizens can do CrossFit just at their own level.

So what does it take to do CrossFit? It’s all about attitude. When you walk into a CrossFit gym you can expect to work. There are no pills or quick fixes to getting healthy, being fit, or being strong, in the gym or in life. You have to put in the time and put in the work. Nothing in life worth doing is ever easy. Through life, you have to make big decisions: deciding your college major, walking into your first job interview, deciding to buy a house, deciding to get married, deciding to have kids. Also in your day to day life, when you decide to not hit the snooze button and go workout, or run one more step, run one more block, or do one more rep, it’s hard, and it sometimes hurts. Decisions that really matter hurt physically and mentally, they make you sick to your stomach because you know that this decision is going to take you out of your comfortable routine and you aren’t sure what that is going to entail. Easy usually means that at the very most you are staying the same. The problem with that is if others are getting better then staying the same is like going backwards, you are getting left behind.

When you are at a CrossFit gym you have to be ready to make a change. You need to be ready to embrace the suck. Have you decided to be better then you were yesterday, and not quit because it’s hard? Are you ready to try new things fail and try again? You can expect that some days you will be very sore, tired, and exhausted, but at a CrossFit gym you can expect everyone there is just as sore, tired, and exhausted as you are, and if they can do it you can do it. When you leave, you will know that you, right along with everyone else, took that difficult step to be better then you were yesterday.

So if you are happy with your routine, and comfortable being comfortable, CrossFit might not be a great fit for you; but, if you want to kick comfortable in the nuts and keep pushing on to be better every day, then there is a whole gym of people waiting for you to join them. They have decided to take that first step and are ready for you to walk with them.

Zak

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.